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A Study of Slavery in New Jersey.
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The newspapers contained many notices of reward for the return of fugitive slaves. In some cases the returned fugitive seems to have been treated very leniently. One instance is recorded in which he received no punishment whatever.1 In another case the advertisement promises that if he “shall return voluntarily, he shall be forgiven, and have a new master.’’2 Slaves of both sexes and various ages were among the fugitives. A man fled and left behind a wife and child. A woman with a child of nine months ran away. Slaves occasionally escaped by the ferries from Elizabeth-Town and Perth Amboy to New York.3 In 1734, three were thought to have gone off in a canoe toward Connecticut and Rhode Island. Others attempted to get on board some vessel, or sought a chance to go privateering. A slave sometimes escaped on the back of his master’s horse. Negroes were frequently sold for a term of years. Slaves were at times hired out by their masters ;4 occasionally a plantation together with the negroes to cultivate it was rented, or a mine with the slaves to work it.6 A negro indented servant is mentioned in 1802. In 1794, a slave was given as a donation to the Newark Academy to be sold for as much as he would bring.6 The Rev. Moses Ogden bought him for fourteen pounds. Mr. Atkinson states that this clergyman owned a number of slaves whom he employed to work his farm lands.7 The slave’s position as a chattel is brought out clearly in many advertisements of sales where slaves are classed with horses, cattle, farming utensils and household goods.8 1
2 3 Gentinel of Freedom, VI, No. 34. Ibid., IV, 45. Supra, p. 34. 5 Centinel of Freedom, VI, No. 14. N. J. Ar., XII, 186, 251. Atkinson, History of Newark, N. J., 170-172. 7 Moses Newell Combs, another Newarker of the same period, was a representative of the anti-slavery sentiment. He was noted for the free school which he established for his apprentices, but also advocated zealously the emancipation of slaves. This latter principle he himself put into practice by manumitting a negro that he owned (Atkinson, 148). 8 For example, the notice of the sale of a farm at Elizabeth, in 1801, reads : “On the above farm is also to be sold a negro man with four children, a horse, chair, cows, and farming utensils ” (Centinel of Freedom, VI, 11). 4
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